Tennessee football: 5 concerns surrounding Vols offseason

5. Fewer practices due to no bowl game

After all the injuries that limited the amount of offseason reps the team could get last year, Tennessee football needed extra practices for its players to learn Jeremy Pruitt’s new systems. You’re talking about a team that went the entire season learning the transition to a 3-4 and the transition to a pro-style.

As a a result, getting to 6-6 and bowl eligibility would have been huge for these guys. So it was a big deal for the Vols to come up short in that quest. Those 15 practices would have done wonders for this team.

Because they didn’t have them, Pruitt is going to have to spend even more time this spring teaching the nuances of his systems than he would have wanted to. Now, to be fair, the team did go through a whole season learning it. And with more talent coming in, this is all a reason for us to place this specific concern at the bottom of our list.

But the offseason injuries, the gauntlet of focusing on and strategizing for opponents, and then in-season injuries all limited the focus half the guys could put on learning everything about the schemes. That cost them dearly, and it makes this spring halfway similar to another first year for Pruitt and his staff.

Don’t be surprised if, at least for the first half of spring ball, Pruitt is again focusing on things and mentioning them in media sessions that you would have expected players to already know. This is a reason bowl games are such a huge deal.